Give Me A Second So I Can - Catch My Breath

Possibly the best final sentence in a PR release ever...


"The fifth instalment in the highly successful series and potentially the best yet.
The Saturday Sessions from The Dermot O’Leary Show is packed full of 40 live tracks from a whole host of artists, performed exclusively on Dermot O’Leary‘s weekly BBC Radio 2 show.
Much of the album is full of unusual and beautiful covers. Highlights include London Grammar’s take on Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”, John Newman covering the classic “Sign Your Name” and Biffy Clyro giving their spin to Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams’ “Get Lucky”. Along with stripped back performances of some of the artists’ own tracks showing their true musicianship, this album is a must for fans of the bands, fans of the music and fans of Dermot O’Leary."

The Concrete And The Clay Beneath My Feet

There are many reasons why the brief and scarce hours spent with the Pocket Sex Goddess are so precious. She has, for one, no idea why she has that nickname and regardless of what she thinks, she’s wrong; she can drink me under the table; it does my ego no end of good to be seen with her; and she has the same slightly finicky approach to grammar as do I.

We’re both familiar with the concept of English being a fluid creature, ever evolving as common usage, hateful though it is, tweaks a definition here or a sentence structure there. We’re both open to neologisms even though they may have the aesthetic qualities of the new Routemaster bus.

However, we both have lines we feel should not be crossed. Mine is the less vs. fewer’ thing. I don’t care about what Stephen Fry says and I don’t give a damn about supermarket express checkouts; when it comes to a lesser number of countable nouns, it’s ‘fewer’. Yes it is. Don’t argue.

Hers is just as simple; the use of the words ‘could of’ or ‘should of’ in place of ‘could have’ or ‘should have’. I can’t help but agree and indeed did, loudly and joyously, when she brought it up. Just because something sounds as though it could be spelled in a certain way, there’s no reason it should be. We have homophones and homographs and all the many joys of this language and we should embrace each of them like a kitten that’s just come in from the rain.

Today, though, finding myself with a few hours of virtual house arrest as I waited for a phone call which, though promised, never came, I amused myself by tidying up, by taking photographs of the cat, and by thumbing through my copy of Eric Partridge’s Usage And Abusage.

This is what Partridge has to say:

would have, in conditional sentences, is incorrect for had, as in ‘If he would have wished, he could have spared you a troublesome journey’.

The ground turned to quicksand, all that was once certain turned to dust. Both the PSG and myself had been arguing for what we thought was correct, and both of us were wrong. Looking at Partridge’s edict, it seems the same rule, based as it is on the past tense of ‘have’, also applies to ‘could have’ when used in the past tense. .

So now we have to re-train ourselves to say ‘would had’ and ‘could had’, and to contract them to ‘would’d’ and ‘could’d’.

Which, if you ask me, are small prices to pay for our continued ability to annoy the hell out of others.

I Dreamed Last Night

In the dream, there’s a garden. It’s beautiful. It has flower beds arranged to make a maze that I walk through, dazed by the scent. Although each bed is small, plants grow high at each side, obscuring the sightline more than a few feet in front of you, so the walk is unguided, with no destination, a mystery tour in miniature.

There’s a hedge separating the garden from a house. The house also cannot be seen properly. An arch cut into the hedge is the only way to pass from one to the other. Everything is slightly overgrown, as though nobody has tended to it for some time.

I go through the arch, stooping a little, dodging spiderwebs that aren’t there. A door, a farmhouse door in two parts, opening at top or bottom or both, is fully open. Somebody is standing just inside, just out of view. She turns and looks toward me but not at me; she’s small, her hair is loosely pulled back and held with something elastic. It’s blue, a bright blue, more a turquoise, and I know as soon as I see it who she is.

She seems occupied with something, not acknowledging me as I approach with my head pushed forward in curiosity. I want to ask her what she’s doing but the voice, the words, aren’t there. She stands in the doorway now, holding a small watering can made of tin. She lifts her head and I see her face for the first time: I know her, I’ve seen her so many times before, but she’s different this time. Her eyes seem too far away, her skin is too dark, too much like she’s been in the sun. She never liked the sun.

She looks at me. Her face looks unnatural now, heavily made-up. Even on nights out she preferred just the barest of cosmetics. This is not right.

She should smile. She knows me. Instead, she just looks with empty, uninterested eyes as if she were reading a train timetable or watching people from a balcony.

It’s then that I see her mouth, her lips too close together, held in a pout by something inside. I say her name, a question rather than a greeting. Nothing changes.

And then I understand. I know why she looks so much like and still so much unlike herself, why her face seems to be falling into planes more suited to a prone figure than to someone standing upright.

It’s how she looked the last time I saw her; laying unmoving and unwakeable, cushioned in white satin, protected by pale wood.

I drop before her, no strength in my legs. “I’m sorry”, I tell her. “I just didn’t know.” She looks through me, taking her watering can and moving, dreamlike, purposeless, past me and into the garden.

I can do nothing. Just stay there, kneeling, powerless, sobbing the same thing over and over again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I’m so so sorry,” Again and again, feeling my face burn with pain and regret, eyes blinded by tears.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…” Again and again, without hope, as she walks into the garden and leaves forever. 

SLEEP-DEPRIVED COMIC-BOOK REVIEWS (3)

Tuesday’s over! Wednesday’s here! It’s time for SDCBR!

Cooke, Cooke, Cooke,
Cookability, that's the
 beauty of gaaaaas...

All-Star Western 29

I’ve bought this every damn month since September 2011. I bought every one of the 70 issues of the Jonah Hex series before that and I still can’t type the name Jonah without slowing down and doing it with one finger and then still getting it wrong.

When I picked up this issue to read it, a few pages got stuck together and it opened at an ad for a videogame. I couldn’t tell. Anyway: guest artist this month which is a bit of a wrench, both visually and emotionally as the usual Moritat pencils and inks are one of the main reasons for sticking with ASW. Writing’s a bit odd, there are narrative captions that keep changing tense so you’re never sure what’s happening or happened or will happen. Also, characters sometimes use contractions in speech and sometimes don’t, so there’s a disconnect as you try to reconcile the differing patterns.

And here’s a thing, a small thing but one that sticks in the mind and the craw: throughout this run, Hex has been drawn to resemble (on his good side) a youngish Clint Eastwood. Here, he’s more like a Thunderbirds puppet, or maybe Davy Jones out of The Monkees after a crash diet.

Very pretty cover, though, as is the case with most issues of ASW and of Jonah Hex before it: this month it’s by Darwyn Cooke who counts as One Who Can Do No Wrong, Not Even That Watchmen Thing in my book.

You do realise, I hope, that one of the small pleasures in my benighted life was to sit on a Sunday afternoon, full of good lunch, and to read a pile of comics, maybe two or three week’s worth. Nowadays I get in on a Tuesday, put a pizza in the oven and read what I’ve brought home straight away so as to share my forensic insight with you. Appreciate my sacrifice, mofo.

Silver Surfer 1

So looking forward to this. Great character who’s not been able to hold down his book for years, great creators. On the down side, Mike Allred seems to be a very binary taste (can you have binary taste?) in that some folk love him like I do, some can’t stand him  (</Lina Lamont>), at least not on ‘straight’ superhero stuff, and FF didn’t exactly set the shelves alight, did it?. Also, word from the shop punters is that the only Surfer that’s really worked is the original ‘Oh Woe Is Me I Am Alone’ Space Morrissey version, and the new try looks like it goes for a more Doctor Who vibe, what with there being a young companion along for the ride, and the ‘Anywhere and Everywhere’ tagline.  Dan Slott, though? Started me reading Spider-Man again after a twenty-year estrangement, and I loved his Great Lakes Avengers stuff. So, everything looking hunky dory from this viewpoint.  Here goes.

Ha! Doctor Who opening! FF 48 was twelve years ago! The two kids are named Eve and Dawn, probably because it would be dumb to call them Midday and ClosingTime. Allred draws pretty women. The Surfer looks a bit off. Can’t put my finger on why.

The Incredulous Zed. The Impossible Palace. Definite Doctor Who vibe going on here. Microsmic versus Macrocosmic. Trivial everyday concerns  - the thread count on sheets and Vegan catering -  versus the giant planetary fear of Galactus.

Ooh! Cabin In The Woods moment! I love Cabin In The Woods. It’s the eyes. That’s why the Surfer looks off, the eyes are a bit over-kohled.

The Never Queen. And a mysterious girl who is the most important person in the Universe.

Oh yeah. Definite Doctor Who vibe.

Back for the next issue? Ah, why not?

Superior Spider-Man 30

You know what? I don’t like Spider-Man 2099. I don’t like his costume, or his ridiculous expletives (‘Shocking’. ‘Bithead’. Just say what you want to say, man. Surely in 85 years the language has evolved?). Slott’s only plotted this issue, and his dialogue’s been one of the best things about SSM.

Anyway, what you’ve been expecting to happen for the last thirty issues happens here, maybe a little earlier than you’d expected. Certainly an issue before I’d expected. And there’s a big ol’ hint that the big bad isn’t who you think it is (in fact it’s more than just a hint, if I’m reading it correctly). There’s a big two-page spread where you can say “I know that issue” or maybe “I have that issue” if you’re a millionaire.

Oh, and there’s a full reprint of the recent Black Widow #1 in the back, so that’s nice.

Hawkeye 18

An Annie Wu issue, which means a Kate issue, and Kate issues are always fab because Kate is fab and so is Annie Wu. Shit gets real here as the Cat Food Man gets a name (And what a name it is for us old bastards) and some very bad things happen.

It’s an obviously Fraction comicbook, lots of disjointed dialogue that sounds realistic but isn’t (and if that sounds like a diss, it’s not: writing dialogue compact enough for the comics page but which carries both information and characterisation and still carries any resemblance to natural speech is bloody hard. Fraction does it better than most).

The thing is, Hawkeye – whether Kate or Clint orientated – has always been the Marvel Comic you could read without having to know about lots of other Marvel Comics. That’s why I’ve been able to recommend it, in both pamphlets and trades, without reservation, to everybody, comics bod or civilian, who walks into the shop. He’s a guy (and she’s a gal) who shoots arrows. No costumes, no superstuff. Even when the book has tied into the rest of the line, your casual reader’s never really needed to know who those women were who turned up with cards on their heads, or what Kate had done outside of this book. Now, suddenly, there’s costumes turning up, albeit only for one panel, and even though it’s not essential to know who Cat Food Man was/is it’d be pretty handy if you did. 

Still, despite minor reservations creeping in, a solid, enjoyable – no, delightful – book.

Time to stack up some z's now, so tomorrow I can wake up and realise with creeping horror what I've done. Really ought to write these books' names down on a notepad so I know who they are in the morning. 

THE LATE REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

It’s Friday night; the first promise of Spring has lulled us into wearing light overcoats then betrayed us with a kiss of freezing wind. The Woman Of A Certain Age keeps me waiting a little longer than I’d like, so I’m standing outside the Odeon in Muswell Hill. Anybody who has ever arranged to meet me knows I’m not a waiter-insider no matter how cold it gets.

We order hot chocolate from the foyer kiosk and wander upstairs to the main screen. There, a small man greets us warmly and reaches for our tickets with his one good arm, the other twisted up against his chest.

“Sit where you like’, he says. “Nobody else will be coming tonight.”  We sit in the general seating area.

“No, not there” he tells us. “Sit there, those two seats. The sound’s better there.” W e can’t yet check on this as there’s no sound to listen to. “I’ll be back in a minute, just going to check on something.”  And off he goes down the steps, dragging one leg a little as he does.

He comes back and beams as he tells us that he’s checked with the booking office and there’ll be only another five or six people in. So he invites us to sit anywhere we like – not in the one-and-nines, but how about the Premier seats that have extra-large armrests and tip back a little?

We’re not about to refuse a free upgrade, and he’s good enough to let slip that the really expensive seats, the double-sofa jobs at the front, are really not very good and have hardly any legroom compared with these seats, the seats he’s pointing to with his one good arm.

“This is lovely” we say, making necessary conversation until something happens on screen – trailers, Coke adverts, those irritating quizzes – to stop all three of us from talking.

I start on about the beauty of the cinema itself. It’s a wonderful building, the Muswell Hill Odeon; one of the last of the 1930s Art Deco picture palaces, not yet carved up too badly into twenty-seat mini-cinemas, with sweeping lines that draw the eye down toward the screen.

“Say something” he says. “Say something loud”. I don’t need telling twice, so I let out a tentative yelp.

It rolls around the auditorium, bouncing back from the screen and somehow gaining in volume, until it burst back at me.

“Bloody hell.”

“Yeah!”  He and I grin at each other, and spend a minute or two competing with hollers and Cab Calloway-style Hi-de-hoes – it’s only fitting, given the surroundings – until we’re standing at opposite ends of the front row, leaning over the rail, whooping together into the empty space in front of us.

Eventually The Woman Of A Certain Age tells us that we should, despite her enjoyment of this childishness, knock it off. Besides, another couple have come in and our new friend really ought to do for them what he did for us.

So he does, but without the acoustic adventure, and we all settle back into being typical cinema-goers.

The film is excellent. A skeletal Matthew McConaughey is all nose and cheekbones and impenetrable accent; at times, the sound, obviously mixed to be absorbed by a full audience of actual people, sounds cotton-woolly and indistinct. Having to concentrate on what he says doesn’t detract from his performance; rather it enhances your immersion in his character’s situation.

Everybody leaves except us; I like to read at least the first half of the credit roll, and more so for a film which has no opening credits except a title card. A small shock at seeing Jennifer Garner’s name: I’d not recognised her, but then I know her mainly for Elektra, which she’d probably rather not be recognised for.

We make our way downstairs: there’s no sign of the usher. It’s a pity, I tell The Woman Of A Certain Age; I’d like to thank him.

As we get to the last doors before we head out into the March cold and a take-away from Toffs, he’s there, tidying the foyer. I offer my hand, realise his good hand is holding a broom, and not knowing what best to do, pat him on the shoulder.

Low Content Mode

There's been very little new material here for the last few days as there has been a bout of, well, not so much burning the candle at both ends but also taking a blowtorch to the middle of the candle then strapping the candle to an IED and watching it explode in a shower of coruscating little light-bursts, a bit like when you try to stub a cigarette out in a high wind but about a thousand times brighter and a thousand times more likely to set you on fire.

As soon as the thick-headedness caused by lack of both sleep and proper food has passed, normal service will resume.

SLEEP-DEPRIVED COMIC-BOOK REVIEWS...

...has to get up early in the morning so is held over for a few days.

Meanwhile:

New Daredevil logo. Those cute lil' devil ears on the second D? No. 

Tell you what, Whoopi Goldberg's looking her age these days. (from Revolutionary War: Warheads)

To the point

There’s a large branch of Primark, not that there are any small ones, you don’t see Primark Bijoux on random corners the way you see Tesco Expresses and Sainsburys Locals but give it time, before you know it you’ll be able to buy hoodies in a just-too-thin-to-be-any-good-against-a-stiff-breeze acrylic mix and a choice of slightly squeamish colourways no more than a short stroll from your door.

Let’s start that again.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre, and as much as I adored the great Alan Coren he was wrong when he said, as he did on a radio programme called Freedom Pass in which he and another gentleman of a certain vintage used their pensioners bus passes to travel from Camden to Palmers Green on the upper deck of a 29, that the big shopping centre was built on the site of the old Wood Green Empire. The old Wood Green Empire still stands, more so than does the old British Empire; it's now a branch of the Halifax a good hundred yards from the redbrick monstrosity called Shopping City. Still, a remarkably entertaining programme which was re-broadcast a few nights ago on Radio 4 Extra as part of a tribute, and a much deserved one, to the late great man. 

Third time lucky?

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day, not that I was shopping there, more of an M&S man myself, occasionally Zara Man, sometimes a cheeky amble through the gentleman’s department in John Lewis or Debenhams but, being my age, caught on the outer edge of being able to wear jeans and nearing the time when I’d appear ludicrous in anything other than proper trousers, a sensible shirt and jacket, maybe a hat.

And again. 

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day and, really it’s not even as if it’s a place to go to look at other people. Everybody there seems happy enough and I certainly don’t want to get all snobbish about them, about the clothes, certainly, I’ve never seen anything in there I’d want to put anywhere near me, but not the people.

This’ll work eventually.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day and again, the people there are fine but if you were, perhaps, looking to shall we say make new contact with new people, it’s not the place you’d start. Supermarkets at around six in the evening, they’re good for that sort of thing. You can get a head start by checking people’s baskets, see how many ready-meals for one they’re buying, whether there’s a cat involved, that sort of thing. That’s the sort of thing.

I’m not giving up.

There’s a large branch of Primark near us, in the big shopping centre. I was walking through it the other day, and as I turned a corner this tall and rather self-possessed girl stretched out her arm and punched me, right in the kisser. Accidental, of course, it’s unlikely this girl goes around punching strange men in discount clothes shops or any other place, unless it wasn’t accidental at all. Maybe punching strange men is something she does all the time in all manner of place. Maybe, and I hope this doesn’t sound misogynist, she sees it as a feminist thing to do. Nip into a shop, smack some unlucky bugger in the mouth, make it look like an accident – Oops! I was just putting on my cardigan! Sorry! I was just checking my phone! – and mark it up as a small victory against the repressive forces of male hegemony.

She apologised, quite genuinely, in that ‘oh my god I’ve just punched someone!’ way that involves a hand on the victim’s chest, combining sorrow and sympathy, then scarpered. I checked my wallet. She seemed like a nice girl but in Wood Green you can never be too careful. Then, out of nowhere, an assistant appeared, full of are you alrights and you’re not hurts, and she started a conversation that kicked off as being about the weather but suddenly turned into Oh My God I Know You! And as it turned out, she was the daughter of an old customer of mine and she remembered her daddy taking her to see me in my old shop, many years ago. He’s passed now, sad to say.

Small world. Sometimes not big enough. 

So. What happened was...

I have received a letter from a Mrs. Elaine Palethorpe of Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire* in which she kindly asks why the original Tottenhamista blog died the slow, lonely death of neglect and isolation that it did.

Well Mrs. Palethorpe, your concern is appreciated. As you asked so kindly, here’s what happened.

Margaret Thatcher died.

I had known for several years what my considered reaction would be to her death. I had the jazz-musician anecdote ready and waiting.

When the time came, I just had to put it into a suitable form and make it public. Which I did.

Whether it was the Baroness’ death or the fall of some other curtain I cannot say, but after that day I no longer felt the need to continue. Posts became fewer and farther between, a strange ennui descended, the urge to foist my ill-tempered attempts at entertaining the masses** left me. Frankly Mrs. Palethorpe, I scarcely wrote a word in the best part of a year and frankly I didn’t want to. I was in a form of hibernation, shedding an old skin if you wish, making some adjustments to this old suit of clothes I call my life.

Tottenhamista died, alone, unwanted, unloved.

I have something of a new impetus now.  The day isn’t complete without around a thousand words or so, not necessarily here but in various projects. I have something of a new muse now also, inspiring me to sit here every day and release coalesced thoughts into the wild.

There’s a chance, also, a strong chance, that other things will go further; I’m saying nothing as yet, hubris is a terrible destroyer of potential and I will not tempt my own downfall. If these things happen, and if ‘these things happen’ is not, as it generally is, the phrase that summarises the disappointment of failure, they will be announced here.

Thank you for your interest, Mrs. Palethorpe. My regards to Mr. Palethorpe if such person exists***, and my very best to you both.

*I haven’t.

**sometimes as many as eighteen of them

***he doesn’t

Every post should start with a Bill Withers reference

Lovely day, looks like Spring’s very much about to pop its head around the door, so time for something musically suitable. No idea why, but I fancied Blur’s Out Of Time; a little solemn perhaps, but deep down do we not all have a slight melancholia even as the year rebirths?

I dug out Think Tank, intending only to play the one track before moving on to the random iPoddery that usually scores the day. Somehow the CD started before I could select.

It’s very easy to forget certain parts of an album. You buy one, usually on the strength of something from it that you’ve heard elsewhere, you listen to it all the way through maybe a couple of times, you put it on the shelf and there it stays until you get that urge to hear it again, probably just the one immediate track that made you buy the thing in the first place, but you hear the entire album and…

There are some great tracks on Think Tank that I’d forgotten about. There are also some great tracks on it that I didn’t like when I first heard them. If I’d done as usual and fed the iPod through speakers, I’d’ve played Out Of Time and only Out Of Time, as that’s the only Blur track I have on the iPod. No Tender, no ParkLife, not even Girls And Boys.

Listening to the whole of Think Tank re-established the variety of music the group were creating at that late stage in their career, Damon Albarn’s world music interests were making a firm stamp on the sound but they’d not gone the Full Gabriel. There are loud crazy tracks, and weird experimental tracks and at least one track foreshadowing Albarn’s disappearing-up-himself trick that would make his later solo material such hard work to listen to.

I would have missed all this if I’d just linked up the Pod, and it struck me that most of the music I buy these days is via download. I only buy physical CDs for music I definitely want on my shelves, otherwise it’s an everyday thing to click an icon on Amazon or iTunes and have the sounds playing within a minute or so.

We buy single tracks and ignore what else is offered. We buy whole albums and after a while we delete every track that isn’t that one immediate favourite. We can’t go back and be surprised, months or years later, that the music we didn’t like then is music that sounds perfect now. We change. Our tastes change. But in our rush to embrace ever greater amounts of the immediate, we’re losing the means to re-evaluate and re-appreciate the old. It’s also unavoidable that download sales are more immediately recognised by artists and by management, each click registering in the cash register or in the songwriter’s pen, giving them a real-time illustration of what the public wants. And as the public gets what it says it wants, only those most unconcerned with commerciality will produce anything other than what already goes down well.

Worse than this, as we hack away everything that isn’t familiar, we lose the guide that shows us the unseen city. If Graham Parker’s band The Rumour hadn’t covered Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me on the b-side of an old vinyl 45rpm single, I’d have had no initial exposure to Duke Ellington. No Duke, no Dizzy Gillespie, no Miles Davis. An entire planet of new and wonderful sounds eliciting newer and more wonderful responses from brain and heart, all branching from that one flip of a scratched disc.

We can’t prevent technological progress and we shouldn’t wish to. Nobody wants to be sat in front of a tiny, near-unreadable black-and-white tv screen watching the Coronation. Let’s not lose our sense of adventure, though, and let’s above all not lose the knowledge that growing up, growing older, brings different appreciations of old experiences.

None of this, however, will stop me from throttling my bloody lodger if he plays this sodding Nazareth’s Greatest Hits album one more time.

Jesus

This morning we have a headache. Normal service, etc, etc.

Meanwhile, here is an emergency picture of Debbie Harry.

INTRODUCING… SLEEP-DEPRIVED COMIC-BOOK REVIEWS!

Every Tuesday I work a long hard, ten-hours-minimum day at the sharp end of comic-book retailing, then I kick back and read a few of the week’s new titles, and by the time I do that I’m tired and fractious enough to be both honest about what I’m reading and to not give a toss who that honesty offends.

It won’t be deliberately nasty and it won’t be fawningly polite, but it will be unfiltered opinion, and you know what they say about opinions, don’t you?

There should be pictures but the scanner's taking forever and we value topicality over visuals so there. 

Batman 29

Oh, that’s enough. It’s just… enough. Enough of this continual dragged-out Zero Year bollocks, enough of Snyder’s ‘tell, don’t show’ exposition, enough of Capullo’s underbaked facework where everybody under a certain age looks like a newspaper cartoonist’s version of David Cameron or an over-filled sausage if there’s any difference between those two, and everybody over a certain age looks like a caricature of Stan Laurel. 

Enough of the sloppy proofing that allows phrases like ‘inulin pump’ to appear (yes, I’ve checked. Inulin is a dietary fibre. If you need a pump for that you’re beyond Batman’s help). It’s a fucking insult to your readers, especially the diabetic ones. They’ve got enough difficulty dodging comas while they plough through this shite, they don’t need you not giving a toss about the name of their medicine. 

And especially enough of slapping a heavier cover on this tosh and charging five dollars for it. That’s four and a half quid at my local, probably somewhere close to that at yours. That’s just taking the piss. I’ll stick with Detective because I like the work the new team did on Flash, but the main Batbook’s off my list from now on. Which leaves just ‘Tec out of the whole DC line for me. Can’t say I’ll miss ‘em.

Hawkeye 17

Weird. Very weird. I mean, I applaud the idea and the execution and by golly it’d be great if every title took a chance like this every so often, but while Hawkeye’s a great book (not just a great book for a ‘superhero’ title from Marvel, but a great book full stop), it’s not the biggest seller, and I wonder if something as experimental as this issue may not end up causing a little bit of alienation from the readership. Also I can see Fraction eventually leaving this book like he did F4 and FF, and some less-able berk coming on and trying to do issues like this and royally fucking it up. Anyway: well done Fraction, well done Eliopoulos, well done Bellaire, well done Aja even if you only drew two pages. Next issue: Kate. I like Kate.

All-New X-Men 24

I was really surprised by this book when I picked up the first issue: I’d not looked at an X-book for years and actively disliked Bendis’ smartarse, not-a-lot-happens-but-everybody’s-so-snarky writing style (See! Anybody can do it!). But the two went together really well, and here we are 24 issues later, still together. Having said that, this issue’s part of a cross-over and cross-overs are what made me ditch the X-books in the first place because too many issues of an over-long and badly-written story (ARE YOU LISTENING, BATMAN?) and too many characters is just more than I want to concentrate on. Also, I don’t care for the other book involved in this cross-over. Don’t ask me why. I just don’t. Also, although Immomen & von Grawbadger make some delightfully pretty pictures, the colouring mutes the line art’s definition a little too often in this issue, losing figures in a one-colour background or foreground. There’s a spread showing a whole load of Marvel’s alien races, but as they’re pretty much all in purple it’s hard to see who’s who. Same with the Shi’ar and, shamefully, the Starjammers. These are colourful, swash-buckling space adventurers, people! Let’s  see ‘em pop off that page!

Superior Spider-Man 29

Coming to the end of the Otto Era (or… Are we?) which will be a shame. I like very much the idea of a superhero doing seriously fucked-up things in the pursuit of doing a better job, and I like even more that said super-hero is a complete arsehole, and that said arsehole is genuinely trying to a good person but just can’t help being an arsehole, and that his fellow super-heroes notice something’s off but most of them have always thought he was an arsehole anyway so they just let him get on with it. I also like very much that some of the people reading this will have had some form of mental infarction half-way through that sentence. Nice spread in this issue showing Otto’s reasons for hating Parker-Spidey, also a Ben moment, some foreshadowing of a pending Gwen moment, and some pretty heavy hints as to who’s going to be behind Parker’s face once this thing goes Amazing again. 

Avengers Undercover 1

I was one of the, I dunno, thirteen or so people who read and loved Avengers Arena. I loved it so much that I recommended it to anybody who’d listen (like I do with Hawkeye. I’m good like that). Some of these poor sods actually listened. One of the reasons I loved AA was that yes it was Lord Of The Flies and it was Battle Royale and it was Hunger Games, but also it was about kids being completely out of their depth and doing things they didn’t think they ever could, both good and very very bad. More than that, it was about characters I didn’t know – I hadn’t touched a Marvel book in years – and those characters, although for the most part established in other titles, were relatively minor, which meant they could actually be killed (fiction-killed, obviously, with the attendant opportunity to get better). Which in turn meant there was actually some genuine character progression in the book, and quite a bit of dramatic tension. I mean, no matter how many times you see some mindless hype about The Death Of The Fantastic Four, you know it ain’t going to happen and in the end it’ll come down to a change of costume. If big red skull-face guy Mettle gets torn to pieces or Red Raven breaks her neck, though, they’re gone. When you've just got to know and like these kids, that's a blow, that is. 

AU builds on the denouement of AA and hints that it’s going to be a kind of Thunderbolts –(first run)-in-reverse, but I think – I hope – it’s going to be more than that. Smaller cast this time because most of the original lot died in AA (which is a great phrase, it’s like there’s a sniper going round picking off alcoholics).

A bit naughty: two pages for the credits? I know it’s a way of keeping the price down to $2.99 (ARE. YOU. LISTENING, BATMAN?) and it’ll look nice in the trade, but…nah.

NEXT WEEK, SAME TIME: More of these twitchy, ill-tempered castigations of some poor bunch of bastards’ hard work! 

Is There A Commissioning Editor In The House?

I should have a chat show.

I’d be good at it.

I like meeting new people.

It’s not as if a complete unknown hasn’t hosted a chat show before. Jonathan Ross was unheard of when he made The Last Resort. There’s precedent.

I have a few ideas for the show. For a start, it should be on very late at night, and it should be open-ended, so if we get into an interesting area we can keep chatting without having to cut things short.

And it should be on BBC4 because I like BBC4, and if BBC4 gets canned or shoved online like BBC3 it should go out kicking and screaming and shooting out new ideas like a doomed little Catherine Wheel.

And it should really be on a Sunday. At midnight. Because the whole idea of this show would be to get people on it who have something better to say than just a plug for their new product. So making the show a bit of a bugger to be on ought to weed out that bunch.

And it should be live. On a Sunday. At midnight. And I, as host, should have been working on the prep for this show very late into Saturday night and all day Sunday, so that I am tired and fractious and possibly a little drunk, though I do find drink dulls the blade a little and we don’t want that, do we? And because I will be tired and fractious, I will not care very much for the niceties of chat shows, and shall show my guests exactly the level of respect I feel they deserve. Which may not be high.

My ideal guests for the first show would be Johnny Vegas (first question: your autobiography: not all that, was it?) and Alain de Botton (first question: why don’t you just shave it all off, or get a wig or something?). Possibly Victoria Coren, but now that she’s married, what’s the point? And somebody nobody’s ever heard of, somebody who does something interesting but not sensational. I can think of a couple of people who’d fit that description.

Musical guests would be booked based on random grabs from my record collection, but would in all probability include Nick Lowe, Scritti Politti, and if they’re in the country Shelby Lynne and Susanna Hoffs/Matthew Sweet. Neil Hannon could lead the house band, if there is one. Maybe the odd touch of deathcore, just to keep things lively.

I can see it now. All the men with next-day beards and kebab-shop eyes, the women still fresh after grabbing a power nap in the green room but nonetheless likely to absently scratch their hair or smudge their mascara. It’d all add to the feel of the thing, the ambience of the last few people in the pub after closing time, not all of them at all merry, some of them a bit miffed about not being merry, like a chat show designated driver.

When I said, at the beginning of this,  'I like meeting new people’ I may not have been entirely honest. Generally I do, but let’s be honest, sometimes you take a dislike to people from the start, don’t you? I’d like to be able to have people on who are, frankly, horrible bastards. I’d try to be nice to them but I have limited patience with the best of people, so it wouldn’t be long before I was sighing, looking around, tapping my foot, then eventually asking them why they’re such a bleeding nuisance or whether they know what an irritating prick they actually are. Then maybe the other guests could join in, not necessarily on my side, I don’t need to be loved, I don’t need their validation. And we could have a right old barney.

Anyway, that’s my pitch, and I hope you like it, Mr. Controller. My agent has a contract ready when you are. 

Notella

I like chocolate. I like nuts. Stands to reason that I like the spreads that combine the two. A couple of slices of wholemeal toast with choc-nut spread on makes a decent breakfast, and there's bound to be a nutritionist standing around someplace who, in exchange for funding, will tell you it's good for you. 

The trouble is, I like good dark chocolate and the spreads are always too milky and too sugary.

Luckily, chef Bill Grainger came up with a home-made spread recipe which happily handled being played with – using a mixture of chocolates, adding a little more cream and a little less sugar – until it was exactly what I wanted.

You’ll need sterilized jars to store this; used 300g jam or marmalade jars are ideal. Wash them well in hot water, them boil a kettle and pour boiling water into and over the jars and the lids. Empty them – use an oven glove – and let them dry in the oven while you roast the hazelnuts. Two jars is enough for this quantity, which lasts me a couple of weeks.

The chocolate is up to you: I use 100g of high cocoa content (70%) choc and make up the weight with bog-standard Cadbury Dairy Milk or even supermarket block milk, but use whatever you’re happy with. Bear in mind that high-cocoa chocolate will have more oils in it so if it’s overheated it'll separate that much quicker. If it splits you’ll be left with a lump of very hard, bitter chocolate and a load of excess oil, especially as it’ll mix with the oils from the nuts, so be careful.

150 g chocolate

100 g blanched skinless hazelnuts

60 g unsalted butter

2 tablespoons caster sugar

150 ml double cream

a little salt

Preheat the oven to 180/350/gas 4.

Spread the nuts out on a baking tray and roast them for about ten minutes or until they’re just turning light golden.

Let them cool for a minute then put then into a blender and grind them finely; you may need to give the machine a shake to get the bigger bits moving around. If you fancy a bit of a crunch in your spread, leave a few larger pieces unground. Add the sugar and blitz it with the nuts for another minute or so. You should end up with something a bit like coarse flour.

While the nut mixture cools, break the chocolate into small pieces. Put the butter and cream into a saucepan and heat it gently until they’re just simmering. Take it off the heat, add the chocolate, and mix them together until smooth. Do not put the pan back on the heat! The chocolate will melt even if the mix is only warm, but re-heating it will make it separate and spoil.

Mix in the nuts, then add a sprinkling of salt. If the consistency of the spread isn’t quite as smooth as you’d like or it seems to be a little thick, add more cream until you’re happy.

Pour into jars; keep it at room temperature and eat it within two weeks. 

The Late Review

In which we give our worthless, ill-informed opinion on a cultural event that happened some time ago. First:

BRIDESMAIDS (2011)

This is a problematic film, and the problem with it is that it’s exactly the opposite of what its audience thought it was.

It’s pretty much a female version of the many male-led gross-out comedies that have been around for a few years. You know the type: three or four emotionally-retarded yet somehow successful slobs do something, things go wrong, there are fart gags and slapstick and everybody learns something by the end. But Bridesmaids’s  script, by KristenWiig (who also stars) got nominated for both an Oscar and a Bafta. So surely there’s more depth to it than there’d be in just another Hangover movie?

Well no, there’s not. Wiig’s character, Annie, is a passive-aggressive loser who spends too much time moping at the sight (and the site) of her failed bakery business, and way too much more time being a wealthy idiot’s sexual plaything. If we’re supposed to treat Annie with some kind of benevolent indulgence, it’s hard work to do so. She rents a room from a Comedy Brit who violates her privacy. She’s dominated by her mother. She’s a willing victim and it’s almost impossible to feel sympathy for her.

As is usual, Annie meets someone. But Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) is a bully and a control freak: they meet when he stops her for a minor traffic offence, and the first time Annie refuses to do as he wants, he throws her out and sulks like a child. Yet she (and we) is supposed to realise that he’s her soulmate. In a way, he is: both characters are immature, selfish, superficially pleasant but deeply unlikeable underneath. So she capitulates, she does what he wants, and still he acts like a prick about it. 

There is no happy ending to this film. Annie drives off in her white knight’s squad car, lights and sirens blazing in another show of self-obsession. The wedding has been as micro-managed and  over-the-top as the bride feared it would be. The bridesmaids don’t become friends, or at least there’s no sense of any further growth in their relationship: they just go off in different directions with no sign of any concern for each other. It’s like a replay of the final scene of It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) but where that film was heavy with a sense of loss and regret, Bridesmaids is just yeah, see ya, whatevs.

The biggest problem I have with Bridesmaids is that it’s been seen as a major step forward for women comedians. Yes, it’s written by women and most of the cast are indeed female. But it’s directed by a man, and I can’t help but wonder if Wiig would have made a better film if she’s been completely in charge. And I can’t help but wonder how a film as far off the mark as Bridesmaids, with its overt insistence that the women it centres on are, in essence, a bunch of people you’d never care to spend time with regardless of their gender, can be seen as either a celebration of or a step forward for female film. It’s not a female film; it’s a male film that happened to be made by women, and as such it’s no different from and no better than The Hangover Part Three.

But then, I’m a man. So what do I know? 

If Six Was Nine And Two Was Four

BBC3’s gone from being an actual broadcast channel to being an online-only, iPlayer-led thing. I won’t miss it that much, apart from the Friday evening Dr Who repeats when there’s nothing else on to watch over dinner, but then I’m not 3’s demographic.

What concerns me about the loss of 3 is that it’s a precedent. Don’t kid yourselves; there are plenty of people out there who’d love nothing more than the selling-off of the BBC, or at least its gradual attrition into something that they can say isn’t worth licence fee’s money any more.

Now that 3’s going, why not the Asian Network? Or Alba? Or Radio4Extra? They don’t cost that much, it’s true, but if savings are to be made, they’re to be made in the smaller things. Minority channels that hardly anybody watches or listens, but which are exactly what the BBC is there for. It’s the world’s foremost public service broadcaster, and it should be doing exactly what commercial channels cannot do. BBC3’s schedules may sound pretty much like something you can find down around the 200s on the EPG, but in amongst the Snog, Marry, Avoids (a programme I’ll admit to drinking deeply from more than once – everybody needs a break from highbrow every so often) there’s been a good few well-made popular documentaries that wouldn’t have reached the right audience if they’d been on BBC Two or even BBC One. Don’t forget the comedies that were launched by 3 either, or the dramas.

So now 3’s gone, can Four be far behind? Four’s audience figures are lower than 3’s, and its demographic is something that A Very Important Man at the BBC admits is already well served by Two and One.

Despite being exactly who Four is aimed at, I wouldn’t object too strongly if it too were to disappear. It’s very much the default channel in this house, what with its serious news programme at seven and its Friday night music that isn’t played by comedy-haired idiots and its repeats of slightly-obscure sitcoms. But despite this, if it were to go away, that’d be fine, so long as one very important thing happened as a result.

BBC Four is what BBC Two once was and should still be: if we’re to lose Four, turn Two back into the popular arts and documentary channel we deserve.

When Two opened, it was almost exactly what Four is today: intelligent programming for intelligent people. There were programmes like Horizon, bringing science to those who may not have had A-Level Physics and may not have understood the basic principles of the see-saw, but just might have mucked about with a chemistry set and stained their fingers with potassium permanganate, and kept a hold on the curiosity engendered by those thrilling, tablecloth-igniting experiments. There was Jacob Bronoski’s Ascent Of Man, James Burke’s Connections, Robert Hughes’ Shock Of The New, Lord Clark’s Civilisation. I, Claudius. Edge Of Darkness.  All of them piquing minds with vast education or none into thinking new things about old subjects, introducing them to worlds unknown, showing them that there’s so much more than just the same old showbiz.

Two did all this just by being there. How many people were suckered in by some camp old comedy show and then, realising there was nothing much elsewhere, stuck around for the history programme or the science doc? I know I did. I know many more people would do the same if Two were like that today. In the increasingly atomised world of television, where every interest has its own channel, too many viewers find what they like and stick with it. They’ve lost the giddying feeling of coming to the end of a programme, trying the first few minutes of this thing that’s on next which they have no real interest in and finding – blimey! They like it!

The other thing the BBC could do, of course, is to realise that even with a Charter renewal coming up, even though it made some mighty godawful mistakes in the past that have hit it badly in the present, it’s a damn sight more valuable to this nation than any passing Government, and refuse to cower before or kowtow to the pinheads who would see it emasculated or euthanised.

And what we could do, of course, is refuse to let those pinheads do such a thing.